Merced

The definition of Merced

The Merced is a RISCprocessor
developed by Intel with help from Hewlett-Packard and possibly Sun.
It is just starting to be released, but is intended to eventually
replace both the x86 and
PA-RISC processors. Curiously, HP is
recommending that everyone hold off using the first
release and instead wait for the second one. It is
expected some day to be roughly as fast as an
Alpha or
PowerPC. It
is expected to be supported by future versions of
Solaris,
Windows-NT,
HP-UX,
Mac OS X, and
Linux. The current
semi-available Merced processor is called the Itanium. Its overall schedule is
way behind, and some analysts predict that it never will
really be released in significant quanitities.